Oaxaca is a perfect example of a place where those in power see the collapse of order -their order. The violence escalates more in line with
their fear than with ours. When they start beating up photographers and shoving around elderly women, they must be frantic.
This week of May 22 two more police attacks occurred in Oaxaca. One involved beating and kicking a reporter from the daily newspaper Las Noticias as he was photographing a demonstration on Plaza de la Danza. The demonstration was a civic protest against excessive traffic, noise and dirt. The residents had repeatedly sought relief from the governor, but with no response.
Today May 25 the same residents marched again, this time in protest of the aggression of the municipal police against the reporters and photographers, and in particular against the photographer Carlos Román Velasco, from the newspaper NOTICIAS. According to one complainant from the protest group, elderly women were roughed up on the Plaza as well as the reporters. One enters the municipal offices from the Plaza de la Danza.
So now the municipal government is violating the civil and human rights of old women, which I must say I personally resent.
The second of this week’s attacks came with bullets, fired over the heads of teachers in their encampment in the zocalo. The Teachers Union Section 22 mounts an encampment like this one every year that the zocalo is available, that is to say, not under renovation by the government. The encampment is presently causing an effective blockage of traffic in the center of the city, in addition to generating garbage and the pervasive stench of sweat and piss. This year the striking teachers have many tents, large and small, of pretty high quality; they clearly are equipped to live in the zocalo and side streets indefinitely. Tempers are running high because of the traffic blockage and unseemly aromas, I suppose that’s why the cops are shooting off their guns.
On May 25 another march took place, moving from Llano Park (also under renovation) toward the zocalo. Since all the streets are blocked, I’m not sure where they went – they had a truck and a van, which could not penetrate the blocked streets. The march condemned violence against women. In Oaxaca, forty women have died this year after domestic violence. However, the march also condemned the Atenco rapes and violence by police, who, if they are not themselves attacking, ignore women’s rights when someone else attacks. The march carried a banner condemning the Oaxaca government of Ruiz for allowing violence with impunity.
And today is only Friday.
For those who did not take seriously the "call to witness" repression in Oaxaca by emailing or writing travel agents and Mexico officials, perhaps it is time to ask again, is Oaxaca safe and/or suitable for tourism? Is this where you want to spend your summer vacation?
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current scene in Oaxaca
Submitted May 29, 2006 - 11:59 pm by Nancy DaviesThose of us in Oaxaca more than three years recall the vibrancy of the pre-renovation zocalo, from the little naked kids bathed in buckets of cold water and screeching while their Loxicha mothers maintained their encampment, to the daily strolling of vendors with all manner of pesky offerings for innocent tourists, the zocalo stood as the center of a spinning hub. It was indeed spinning, and as the marches, banners screaming assassins!, and the encampments increased, the governmening rulers, first Murat and then Ruiz (and we don’t even mention the municipal mayor Jesús Angel because he’s merely a pudgy puppet whose surname is so rarely heard in Oaxaca that at the moment I can’t remember what it is) – the two governors in succession devised a plan to cleanse the place. With support from the restaurant and tourist owners, the Loxicha women were seduced into taking their laundry off the bushes and moving to a building equipped with beds for their children, several blocks away; the “renovation” closed the zocalo down; the vendors were sent off to the government-donated indigenous vendor’s zoo on another side-street; and to cap it off, the state government palace was emptied and turned into a museum.
Thus we saw the cleansing of the zocalo, a place one now might not desire to visit more than, let’s say, downtown Cincinnati.
And so, you ask, what am I cheering for? Aaah. The teachers’ strike. Somehow, in the mass of tents and bodies, a certain order has appeared, spaces have opened, and in that small orderly space the vendors have returned. You can buy plastic bags of watermelon, grapefruit or mango. You can buy drinks concocted from almonds, rice or fruit and ladled from buckets into plastic cups. The cotton skirts and embroidered blouses, the rebozos, the jewelry, the stenciled T-shirts are all available once again, and among this bounty they’re selling balloons and plastic toys for the kids.
So, what I want to know, Governor Ruiz, is how has this come about? The shops are all empty. The restaurants are filled with vacant tables. The nice new flowers you planted at public expense are wilting, and scarcely a tourist is in sight. But the encampments, banners, signs screaming assassins! and yes, the banished vendors have all returned, while on the northwest corner of the zocalo three young fellows are playing their drums.
I know it won’t last. The banners will come down, and the garbage trucks will sanitize the area once again. But jeez it’s nice. The people united will never be defeated, and sitting among the sprawled and dozing teachers I could only smile and smile and smile.